Why do you make your music?
Bill: I don't really know. For some mysterious reason I'm driven to make this mind of music and if I was smart, I wouldn't. I'd be having a high paid job. It's a katharsis. I do not know whether this translates into Dutch?
It does
Bill: Well it didn't into Japanese. So it's cleanse myself, to purge the system of whatever it is I have to purge, real life maybe. And playing is great too: it's a combination of athletics and intellectual interaction.
Prog Resiste: You have been playing together for a long time, right?
Bill: Yeah we have.
Prog Resiste: It is very easy to notice this.
Bill: Also, a different aspect of music for me is to sit in a room and construct compositions, to work out structures and shapes and forms and that is very interesting too. so there's the players side and the composers side.
Rich, you only seem to play.
Rich: Yeah, I love to play. It's a way to communicate without having to talk.
You wouldn't want to compose as well?
Rich: I think eventually I will. It just takes some time, a tremendous amount of time and life does go on. I've done some percussion composition, but I think that one day you will see some compositions coming from me.
Bill: Well, drummers are usually not composers. The art of drumming is so different. Must drummers I know do not compose. Drums are more like an improvisational jazz, rhythmic primal kind of thing.
Rich: Primal is the right word.
Bill: I mean, I can sit down at a drumkit and have a cathartic experience and all, but still I'm more intellectually driven. He's a little more physical. Drums are great and why would I play drums if I have him?
Why did you want to play them Rich?
Rich: Well, it's the backbone and in this way I'm the driving force on stage.
Prog Resiste: In an interview I once read that you hardly rehearse together and between you two you send parts to each other and eahc of you can then fill in his part. Does this work?
Bill: Not exactly like that. When I write a piece of music, I'll sketch it out in Midi sequence and I'll give it to him to work and play with and then we play it together. So I don't have to spend much time teaching him the song and work on it. It's just like giving him the score and in fact I can just e-mail it to him and he can print it out with a program as a score. It speeds the process.
Prog Resiste: Will the tour give you more inspiration for your music?
Bill: This tour? Yeah well...
Prog Resiste: Like visiting castles in England
Or coffeeshops here in Holland [laughter]
Bill: Maybe, but probably not. Most of my inspiration tends to spring from within and does not come from external sources.
If you look at Under the Wheelsm that seems to come from looking around a little.
Bill: Okay, that's true. That is my reflection of it. Well so far composition is not something I have been doing a lot during this tour. We have been concentrating on playing. The thing that the tour might do is that you know we have this choice: should we record the best sounding album or should we able to play it live? If we don't play live that much we lean more to embellishing the record, make it sound great to listen to. So, we are looking for that middle point where it sounds great, but we still can play it live.
Well, you do not have the money Pink Floyd has.
Bill: No
Not yet, at least. When I first listened to your album, I thought I heard a lot of keyboards. Later on I found out that you do everything through the guitar. Can you tell us how you do that?
Bill: I have been doing it forever. I have been using monophonic guitar synthesizers and tracking devices since 1974 even. I always wanted to make more sounds come out of a guitar. Actually I always wanted to be a keyboard player, but we had a brother who is inbetween us in age and he started studying playing classical piano at a very early age. When I sat down at the piano as a little kid to study, he came over and played much more easy and so I shifted quickly to guitar.
You are having your revenge now.
Prog Resiste: Were you frustrated as a keyboard player?
Bill: Well we were kids you know.
Prog Resiste: I mean it drove you to the guitar but still you play keyboards.
Bill: Well the truth is that less people means that you can do more things. You travel more easily, you rehearse more. The more people there are involved, the more everything you know. So if we can make enough sound with three people, everybody doing an extra part like Phil doing the Midi pedals and he fills in some of the keyboard parts, it just makes it more realistically possible to do things.
Prog Resiste: I also saw in your last e-mail that you recorded some tracks with Jens Johansson.
Bill: Yeah we did one track with Jens Johansson and he is working on more now.
Prog Resiste: Is that a project for you?
Bill: You know, I have some other things up my sleeve. We would like to do a fusion type of thing, like Mahavishnu.
You also worked with a great keyboardplayer called Michael West.
Bill: As a matter of fact I'm currently in the process of producing a new album.
Ah nice.
Bill: It should be done.. whenever he gets more money. Three or our months. We are about halfway through now. And then we'll see what kind of deal we can get. He did the deal with Mellow for Black September and I advised against it. He still did it and that was a mistake. It is pretty good, not too bad. Me and Mike don't see eye to eye on a lot of things and he could never play in our band. He does his thing and we do ours. We are good friends, but if we played together in the same room, one guy would come out dead.
Prog Resiste: Is there a title for it?
Bill: For Mike's album. Oh well I don't know. I'm just interested in the music, not what it is called.
Phil seemed in the beginning to be some sort of session musician. How is his role now?
Bill: Phil started playing with us in the beginning. When things slowed down he went out and had his own band and we tried some other bass players.
Rich: I brought Phil in from the band I was playing with.
Bill: Before that, it ws Rich and me and Kip Wemming who played bass, but he kind of got out of music after a riot and so we were looking for a good bass player.
Rich: I even joined bands to find bass players. [laughter] It's true. It what I do all the time: bring em back home.
Bill: When we started playing progressive in 1986 there was absolutely no progressive music whatsoever in the States. We had no idea of the scene that was going on in Europe, but after we hooked up with ZNR and started reading some magazines and that kind of opened our eyes to all of that stuff. Like Marillion never made it to the States either. Nobody knows it there.
Wel, it's not your style either.
Bill: Nah, it's too ehm boring might be a good word.
When I listen to yuor albums it starts with a lot of ELP...
Bill: Yeah we decided to pick up where they left off. Nobody was doing it at the time.
And then you added some metal to it.
Bill: Yeah, right after the first album I started to produce some metal bands and I thought that was pretty neat so it got into Brainstorm.
Yes, listening to Brainstorm in one go is quite an experience. It leaves you drained, being so loud and aggressive.
Prog Resiste: Like a magazine from Arizona said about your music: "It is music that takes no prisoners".
Bill: That was a good one. You either pay attention and like it or you want to be far from it. It's not pleasant background music.
Myself (Jurriaan), I'm not a big fan of ELP or metal, but after it grew on me, I tend to like it all, although I like the later ones better as they sound more varied.
Bill: Well, during the third album I was listening to quite a lot of romantic composers like Bruckner and Mahler and that you find back in Tragic Symphony. And on the fourth album I wanted to get back to the more straight rock 'n roll kind of stuff.
A lot of your songs seem to have war as a subject.
Bill: Well, not really. On the first album there are a few and in fact it did contain some SF kind of war things, but the second, if you read the lyrics very well, you'll find is about comitting suicide.
Prog Resiste: In your latest e-mail you mention conquering the West Coast and you say there "Fuck Progfest".
Bill: Yeah fuck Progfest. You know, I've asked for four years straight to let us play. When I found out some other bands had canceled I thought we could come out and play. Part of it is about politics, money and record deals and so.
Progfest you mean.
Bill: Yeah Greg Walker runs a record company.
Rich: We don't sell through him so..
Bill: we can not play at Progfest.
Can you live off your music?
Bill: Not yet no. Close. Ehm, I do music full time between the band and the studio.
Prog Resiste: For this reason, are you trying to get to record companies that are in better positions?
Bill: Oh sure we tried, but they are not interested. Major labels are not going to sign us.
But even here there is a difference. What about a smaller, but still large record label, like Roadrunner?
Bill: I even contacted them and they said: talk to Magna Carta. And I would cut my dick off before I would sign with Magna Carta. We have no kind words to say about Magna Carta. Fuck you Mike and fuck you Pete.
Prog Resiste: Magellan did have problems as well.
Bill: Well they all did. It took them three years to get Test of Wills out. I can tell you horror stories about Mike Varney...
Across the hll there's this band Lemur Voice that is currently with Magna Carta. They seem to be satisfied.
Bill: Give them a year or two. Ask them if they've had any money.
Your music does fit well with Magna Carta.
Bill: We were the first to sign with Magna Carta. We were signed to them for one year, but in that year they did nothing. And then we got out of the contract, because they failed to meet the terms of the contract and they came back to us four years later with a better deal and that went zero and then EMI-Japan offered us a deal...it's too much business and not really interesting to talk about. Fact is that Magna Carta fucks their bands over and the artist is the last one to get paid. We'vve actually made real money of these albums, with the licensing deals that we made and we do real well in Japan and we have control. I can put another album out if I want to or wait two years. Nobody tells me when or what to do.
Prog Resiste: What does it mean not to be tied to anything...
Bill: We're not tied to anything
Prog Resiste: ...to a record company, and not to be asked to release an album each year
Bill: The difference is that Magna Carta signs you to a record deal. Something like that you have to record five albums and they control the policy, they control the songs. We don't do that: we make an album and then we license the product. So, I still have the rights to everything I have recorded and I can rerecord it and put it out any way I like. We're in total control of where it goes and when we do another one. [Someone from the Nieuwe Pul now comes in and asks for a creative signature of the guestbook by the band. The band doesn't want to be creative right then]
Prog Resiste: Have you already started the work for the sixth album?
Bill: Well, the live album is not considered something official. It's basically to finance the bootleg for the trip over here. I talked to Jerry [of Background Magazine, a Dutch magazine written in English] and he told me there were some bootleg tapes floating around and I said, well why don't I put one on CD and add some pictures...
Prog Resiste: A limited edition
Bill: Yeah, right. It's 100 percent live and no studio fixes and all that kind of bullshit like the Dream Theater live album. And it also shows that we have taken this obscure underground kind of music and made it all the way to Tokyo. And it's basically only for fans and we're not seeking promotion or anything. People who want to help us out on the tour, buy it. And they've pressed a thousand and when they are gone, they are gone. They're numbered one through thousand. One night we took them out of their jewelboxes and numbered them all. When they're gone they're gone and they're not getting repressed again. The next album will be the fifth studio album and I'm still toying with different ideas for that.
Prog Resiste: Are they long tracks, short tracks?
Bill: I don't know. You know, I've written a lot of stuff. I've written very orchestral sounding things.
Prog Resiste: I noticed that on the latest album, only one long track was present.
Bill: Well, on that album I got sick of prog. Everybody going like: we have a 20 minute song, we have a 20 minute song, like watermark for progressive.
Prog Resiste: You can have short tracks, that are very very nice and still progressive and aggressive.
Bill: You see ads for bands that say "20 minute track", like that says anything. I doesn't say shit. It could be 22 minutes of shit.
It usually is.
Prog Resiste: I ask you this question, because I know the quality of your music is different from the others. When you say twenty minutes track, I will be excited from the beginning, cause I know a twenty minute track will be something of quality.
I think he has been conditioned by the previous albums in that the longer tracks are usually the best ones.
Bill: I have a lot of different things in mind and I'm really not sure what I want to do.
But stilistically, will you continue the line of Until Eternity or will you go back to the more orgiastic sound of the second album?
Bill: It goes to that balance between live and recording. I would really love to do a very symphonic album, with real strings and real orchestra, but how can we afford it. I looked into it, but an orchestra is $16.000 a day. So, you can get samplers, but then you're into synthetic, plastic kind a synthy...well I've heard some good samplers.
Prog Resiste: Comparable to Emerson, Lake and Palmer on Works?
Rich: That was with the London Symphony right?
Bill: Actually, I heard Keith Emerson's symphonic version of Tarkus. Will Alexander .... It sounded pretty believable. Now they're trying to shop a deal and get CBS to pay for an orchestra.
Prog Resiste: You once said in an interview that you once had a discussion with Keith Emerson. The manager mentioned that you're music is very close to theirs. And then it said that you told them that this is the music that they should be doing.
Bill: Yes, it was a "3" show actually in Philadelphia and Carl Palmer got us into the show. He said "Oh yeah, we all sat around one night and had a real good laugh at the tape, because it sounded so much like us". And I said "Well, we're doing it while you weren't". Right, nobody was doing it. I mean I like Devo and some of the New Wave pop, but they're...you know, not that I do not like pop, but it excludes everything.
Do you think there is a future for progressive rock?
Bill: [pointing backwards through the wall to Quidam on stage] This kind of prog rock? I don't know. There will probably always be some kind of underground scene and somebody might come on out on top of it as the leader.
Prog Resiste: You mean like jazz in jazzclubs.
Bill: Yeah right. It will never go away.
Prog Resiste: With a small but stable audience.
Bill: Hmhm, but I don't see it becoming as big as the Spice Girls or something like that.
Well, it doesn't really matter in my opinion.
Prog Resiste: During the tour, do you like playing with other bands. Unknown bands like Grey Lady Down euh...
Bill: Well, we loved working with Ars Nova. We worked in the States and here. They didn't play with us in Japan, but they came out and they were our tourguides.
Prog Resiste: Were there any favourite bands. Bands that you'd like to play with?
Rich: Providence
Bill: Providence was very good. They were really good. And Sphere was really good too.
Sphere?
Prog Resiste: Ars Nova?
Bill: Yeah Ars Nova. Well I just said that so I didn't mention them.
There seem to be many parallels between you and Ars Nova? Three people, busy drummers, bass, the only difference seems to be the keyboard vs. guitar.
Bill: Musically they lean more to the instrumental kind of thing. We lean more to rock. I think the bands form a good pair.
I think they are more unstructured. You seem more into songs and they more into music, and not really into songs with a head and a tail.
Bill: We are more rock outfit.
Will you continue combining instrumental and vocal pieces?
Bill: Oh yeah sure, sure. In the future I will just do what I want to do. I come from a rock background. Like I've told so many people, when I grew up, the progressive bands of the early seventies were just other rock bands. The Allman Brothers, Ten Years After, Elp, you know and nobody called them progressive. Hendrix and Cream and they all had such distinct personalities and these personalities developed these threads of followers for two or three decades and they became subcultures. Like the Grateful Dead, classic rock.
It seems logical. People that like progressive rock are usually male and usually good schooling. So a lot of them are on the net.
Bill: Well a lot of our fans, you know, are metalheads in the US.
Understandable.
Bill: Yeah, metal is more male too.
I once heard Phil Collins remark that only after they turned to the pop side, did they begin to see women at the concerts. You told me that because of me, you got in contact with Senses. How did that go?
Bill: Well she contacted me. In your review, you compared her vocals to mine and we got in touch and started talking using e-mail. She hooked up the show in Connecticut with a band called After the Fall. They're okay.
I just compared the vocals, not the music. The music is very different. I think that if Joan (Morbee of Senses) ever got to the concert she would have been surprised.
Bill: She liked it. She was gonna play, but her drummer left and she had to get a new drummer so I've never seen her play live it. But I thought it was interesting that you say something over here and we meet somewhere over there in a club, because of what you said. Those can be the repercussions of what you say over Internet.
It's closer, right.
Bill: Yeah, it becomes a small world.
The way I see it, is that in the old days people only met people living in their own and neighbouring villages. Then you start forensing and the circle is enlarged and you get more people to talk to, better chances of meeting people you like or who share your interests. And the Internet takes this even further, in that you can look for people world wide with your interests. There's a danger there in that you tend to talk only to people who think and do like you, but the cultural differences may compensate there.
Bill: Like the prog guys. They think, and listen and do prog prog prog all the time. Sometimes they ask me what prog bands I like and I say none of them. Then they go "oh my god".
Well, I think there's a difference between being a musician and being a listener to music. I talked to Pete Nicholls of IQ recently and he said they were always compared to Marillion, but they never listen to them.
Bill: Really?
Yeah, they don't care.
Bill: Well, I listen to...Cream I ocassionally put up, Metallica. I keep up with what is going on. I have Cairo, IQ, stuff like that. People always give me stuff to listen to. But if I want to sit down and put on a disc, I play Mahler's 9th symphony or Bach solo cellosuites, or Sjostakovitsj string quartet, number 15 especially. I play them all time. And then I put on Metallica's black album.
Prog Resiste: And Beethoven
Bill: Oh yes, Beethoven. You don't hear Beethoven in Until Eternity [?]
Prog Resiste: Do you go for classical music or more new ones like Beethoven or romantic classical music?
Bill: I don't really like Mozart, I mean I like the 40th Symphony in G Minor, I like the Requiem, I like Beethovens Pastoral, I like the 9th, I like Mahlers 4th, 6th, particularly 9th and 3rd, Bruckner's 8th and 9th.
And Stravinsky.
Bill: I used to like Stravinsky more when I was younger, but now it's bad, but I have heard it so much. Some of the romantic stuff seems to offer me more these days. I like Nielsen a lot. A Swedish composer. Carl Mielsen. Or was it Finnish
I think it's Swedish. Sibelius is Finnish.
Bill: I like Sibelius, although it's a little overblown for me. I tend to like the later romantics and the early twenty centuries. And of course I like the real neo-classical. Not the Mike Varney neo-classical, but I like Copeland...
And (Philip) Glass?
Bill: Some Glass I like.
Prog Resiste: What about classical guitar?
Bill: I don't really like it.
Prog Resiste: You once did an acoustic show.
Bill: Yeah, well we did that with Ovations. That was more like McLaughlin and Al di Meola do. More like Shakti.
Prog Resiste: You like Shakti?
Rich: Yeah.
Bill: And Ravi Shankar too. We saw this concert of his and it was astounding.
Prog Resiste: You have a sitar
Bill: No. What I really would want to have is a cello, but they are so damn expensive. A cheap one is $600-700.
And in fact the best thing to do is to have it made for you. I know this guy who went to Turkey to pick it up.
Bill: Andrew Lloyd Webber's brother owns a $700000 cello.
Ah, Julian.
Bill: Yeah, that's right. Electric guitar's distortion and sustain sounds like a cello. I love the sounds of a cello. It is my favourite instrument.
And talking of neo-classical. What about the Cuneiform bands?
Bill: Well some of it I do like. I like Univers Zero a lot, I like U Totem a lot. Heatwave is great. I didn't like the Daniel Denis solo albums that much. And some of the other Cuneiform stuff I don't care for very much. Boud Deun is okay, but they don't really turn me on.
The problem with all that stuff is that they don't convey anything any more, and just play for playing sake.
Bill: Someone once said that avant-garde is more like an artistic concept than a musical concept.
They forget emotion too easily.
Bill: Like I stand hear on one foot, a tv on one ear and I play these instruments, that is art. Sometime it can be cool and even brilliant, but not very often.
Well that seems to hold for every kind of music. Every kind of music has the bands that justify it and the other say 90 percent seems to exist to make those 10 percent come out better.
Prog Resiste: That's cynical.
Yeah, but it seems the way it always works out. I mean, there's always a best 10 percent. But of course you should always play for yourself, in the first place. That's what I would do. Everybody likes to be admired I think, but it should not be the only reason to play.
Bill: We didn't set out to be admired. We jammed in the basement all the time you know. We jammed with a lot of players and it was great. The recognition is nice and also financially it helps a lot. If we could be musicians all the time that would be great. But that is not what we set out to do. We are out to be musicians, not rock stars. If we would want to be rock stars, we would hve had whigs and so...
Spinal Tap R/
Bill: Yeah, Spinal Tap
Prog Resiste: Do you plan to continue making the covers for your own CD's?
Bill: Oh yeah. I think so yeah.
He's afraid of that.
Prog Resiste: No, I like the artwork. It's very different from all the others.
That's true.
Prog Resiste: And that's a strong point for the band. I never saw a CD with the artwork by one of the members of the band.
Well, IQ, Twelfth Night, Geoff Mann
Prog Resiste: Anyway, it is rare
Yeah it's rare.
Bill: In college I studied Fine Art and Graphic Design Art. That I thought was the direction that I would take after highschool. But music was more interactive, so I chose that instead. I still like to do it.
Prog Resiste: The drawing are like your music in a way. Because on the first album you have something, one the second you have something two times, on the third it is three times...
Bill: Yeah on the third album it is a three panel, on the fourth it is a cube.
Prog Resiste: Oh yes a cube.
The opening track of the third CD is Tiger! Tiger! with lyrics by William Blake.
Bill: Yeah it's classical. That is real life classical music?
Did you hear the Tangerine Dream version?
Bill: Nah. The Tiger! Tiger! we do was done by Virgil Thompson. He was right under Copeland in terms of American classical composers. He did the original version of it, it's an orchestral piece. It is very heavy.
I also like the Tangerine Dream version. It has nothing to do with your version. The music is different. It breathes a majestic atmosphere and it is kind of quiet.
Bill: Well it's a great poem too. Ours is almost exactly like the Virgil Thompson composition.
Rich: Except for the solo part.
Bill: Yeah, we put the solo in the middle, but the arrangement is exactly like Virgil Thompson.
Isn't a solo another prog cliche?
Bill: Actually, I think that is what prog often lacks: solo's.
Well if you listen to neo-prog, most songs have their solo.
Bill: Well yes, the Genesis and Marillion based bands do indeed often have them.
We already talked how war used to be a subject. No, musically I think that is strengthed by the fact that a lot of the rhythms sound so military.
Rich: Well the snare drum is a military instrument and I love the snare drum.
Bill: Yeah, the drums had to be louder than guns so there you have it.
Rich: And that's the story I'm sticking to.
Bill: Snare drums are very traditional, like Buddy Rich and jazz.
Rich: I always see the drum kit as an extension of the snare drum. I said that if something goes wrong with drum kit I'll just play the snare drum.
I already thought your drum kit was kind of small.
Rich: Yeah it is kind of small.
Compared to what you usually see. Who are you influenced by?
Rich: Well it started with Ginger Baker. Then I went backwards to Tony Williams and Buddy Rich and Gene ??
And Neil Peart?
Rich: Well, Neil Peart is a great drummer, but as far as influencing me, I knew his influences before I knew him.
In fact Neil Peart has this with Buddy Rich also.
Rich: Yeah, I sw that show. After all these years he played and saw these guys play like Buddy Rich. Now he is reinventing this style. I give him credit for that...it took him this long to figure this out.
Bill Bruford
Rich: Not in my playing. I respect what he is doing, but I'm not influenced by him. When I met Carl Palmer I said "I really like all that Buddy Rich stuff you're doing" and he said "Wel, you have to knick your tricks from somewhere". He looked a little upset, but I was trying to compliment him, cause this is what I studied. I actually played in an 18-piece big band at home between Mastermind gigs. I also play with a 10-piece German? band, you know all the march stuff.
Bill: He does all kinds of work out there.
When I saw I Yes concert once with Bill Bruford he had all these electronic things, but he still had the snare drum.
Bill: Yeah he hit that and they all triggered.
Rich: I have a digital set at home. I reserve it for programming my computer. I once used it live, but I don't think you'll ever see me do that again. A drum works when you go on stage. You hit and it works.
Bill: Well the jetlag in Japan was tough. With 14 hours difference it was like walking on stage at six in the morning. Here it was not so bad. We had a couple of days to sleep. To Japan it is a 14 hour flight. So 14 hours flight and 14 hours time difference and so you're 31 hours in the future when you get there. It took it's toll. And they have great beer there and it's not that expensive in restaurants.
Prog Resiste: Will you also play in Eastern Europe?
Bill: Don't know anything about it.
Prog Resiste: I am Romanian.
Bill: Can you get us gigs that pay?
Prog Resiste: Well we'll see hey. I don't know.
Bill: I had this guy from Moscow calling me for CDs and stuff. He said there are gigs in Russia that pay really well in US cash, but we need some experience before we try that. We are only know learning about customs you know. We almost didn't get into the UK. We didn't get a work permit, because it was promotional and we're not really getting paid, so why go through the hassle? So they yelled at us that the next time come to the UK we'd better have a work permit. Next time we will hide our guitars.
Well, the US is not that easy either.
Bill: Yeah the States are tough to get into, I know that. You got to have a visa...
Prog Resiste: They are a little paranoia about bombs like Israel.
Bill: With good reason. And like England you know. The countries that go around taking other countries stuff have something to worry about. We won't get political here.
Indeed, maybe Under the Wheels and Wake Up America, but not much no.
Bill: It's not directly political. It's more a general observation of the downfall. There are places in the cities in America that you just won't believe.
Prog Resiste: Sometimes in your lyrics I see a reflection of the anxiety of the American society.
Bill: That's true. I went down to a bar a mile from my house. I came out of this bar with some beer under my arm and this kid comes up to me and fucking hits me on the side of the head with a rock. That's never happened to me...the kid could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen. I never expected it. It changed the way I looked at people. I ask myself why he did that.
Here it is still kind of quiet. It's also hard for us the imagine how it is over there. In South Africa a lot of people do not stop for stop signs, because you'll get shot and they'll steal your car.
Bill: Well in our major cities we have dangerous places too. Places you don't even think of going to. The police don't even do that. Without getting too political, the whole problem is that too much money is kept up here and not down there. People have nothing to look forward too and they feel they are screwed up. They take it out on others. Everybody points the finger at them saying "It's your fault, it's your fault". At the moment most money goes around in computer businesses. People that program in C++ or system administrators earn a lot of money. On the other hand blue-collar workers and work in the factories has become hard to find. Now Quidam starts to play a cover and Bill reacts as follows: It is like the Progfest video where they played the Lamb, I mean who cares? If I want to see a cover band, I'll go see a cover band....
Like Regenesis?
Bill: Well that is a cover band. And all those tribute albums, they drive me crazy. There's one song that I've always wanted to do, but I don't want to get involved with all those tributes.
And Ride the Valkyrie? William Tell Overture? : Ah well, that's classical.
Bill: He told us Wagner still smacks of Nazi Germany, so we didn't play it, but the Germans will want us to play it.
Well, Wagner might be a bit sensitive here.
Bill: Yeah, well with the SS it was standard listening material. But he was kicked out of Germany.
I think it was his (second) wife that was very much into it. Wagner himself might be anti-semite, but I'm not sure if he was that much into nazism.
Bill: That track on the second album called Triumph of the Will, as was pointed out to me later, turned out to be the title of some propaganda movie from the Germans. Actually it was a Devo song that inspired me to call it that.
Prog Resiste: Your music does contain a number of references to German culture. Do you know Germany?
Bill: No, this is the first time we will visit Germany. Of course, the great symphonists are mostly German. They also have great cars and mechanics and my father was a mechanical engineer.
And early seventies German rock?
Bill: I don't know any German rock.
At the end of the sixties Germany was culturally isolated from the rest of Europe and a lot of bands started their own brand of music.
Bill: No, I don't know it.
Like Tangerine Dream.
Bill: Ooh. Tangerine Dream. I love them. I have all their early stuff.
Kraan and Guru Guru?
Bill: Well, only the first few and afer that...nah.
Well the first few are usually all you need.
Bill: After the first few they all start to sound the same. One of the German bands we are aware of is Triumvirat, Illusions on a Double Dimple.
Triumvirat. Ah yes.
Prog Resiste: Very much like Emerson Lake and Palmer.
Bill: I'ts got a really good organ sound. Some of their techniques were rather advanced actually for the time.
Magma?
Bill: Well, I listened to a few and didn't really like it.
Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh I liked quite a lot.
Bill: Well, I don't know what I listened to. I don't have enough time to listen to all this stuff. There's so much to listen to.
What about Dutch bands?
Bill: Well Focus I do know. I like two or three of their albums. They were good and weird.
Prog Resiste: What about Belgian bands.
He told us he loves Univers Zero.
Bill: I love them yes. And Present too.
Prog Resiste: They had a show a few weeks ago in Brussels
Oh yes with Hoyry-kone.
Bill: I was in touch with Rogier and he tried to get some gigs together, but he couldn't do it in time.
Prog Resiste: Well it is very different.
I don't know anything by them.
Bill: Well the first two are great. It's like Univers Zero with piano and more structure. And don't buy the live album.
And Art Zoyd.
Bill: Well they fit in with Magma I think. I haven't heard anything by them.
Well I also think of them as similar to Univers Zero.